


An Ending

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, Gen, Mistborn trilogy spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4329711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ati and Leras made a promise, and Ati wasn't the one to break it.</p><p>Written for CFSWF 2015</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ending

Scadrial was dying. A festering wound, stagnant. Worn. Thousands of years of slow decay held back by one man. One god.

Preservation, once called Leras.

He had been Ati’s best friend. Now, he was trying very hard to make Ati kill him.

_We never should have made humanity._

More humanity in Leras, or less in the world, might have spared Scadrial this fate. The part of Ruin that was still Ati found that irony amusing.

Leras…less so. He’d never understood the danger in getting attached. Not personally—neither of them had ever considered intermingling with their creations. Just the fact that they were human made them different. Ati was fond of them. Fond enough to ease them into the afterlife. Fond enough to allow them shadowed legacies and weathered monuments that stood for ages after they passed.

Leras couldn’t content himself with so little. Ati had known that from the beginning, but he’d agreed anyway.

Even now, he couldn’t tell if it had been a deserter clinging to an old friendship or Ruin creating the fissure that would one day sever their bond. The Shard did so like endings.

Leras had placed a sliver of his power into their humans. _A compromise_ , he’d called it. Life, sentience, a creative spark to satisfy Preservation. And a debt, a contract guaranteeing Ati an end.

Ati had been young then, too enamored with the soldier who had given him a home to see the loopholes Leras had written in. He promised an end, but put no date to it. Every time Ati tried to collect, Leras put him off.

 _We’ve only just begun,_ he’d said the first time, and later, _You refused humanity for far longer than I’ve had them. It’s only fair._ When mankind warred, Leras begged Ati to let the end come with peace instead of violence. When they found peace, he begged for one last generation of discovery.

Looking back, Ati should have realized much sooner that Leras never intended to repay his debt. He hadn’t realized, though, not for eons. When he did his heart broke, and the world with it.

That first betrayal hurt, even more than the second, which left Ati trapped in the Well of Ascension.

Trapped, while the world died. Preservation’s power in humanity upset the harmony of creation, setting Scadrial on the road to its grave. Mountains crumbled, species perished, water stagnated. People grew frail and sickly. It was not the end Ati had envisioned. It was not peaceful, or kind, or right.

But Leras held on, refusing to let a dead world rest.

So Ati took matters into his own hands. Leras had left him no choice.

He made a story of it, in honor of the stories they’d shared. War stories shared around bonfires, dreams whispered to the stars. Legends of their own making, in the days when Scadrial had yet been wild. Contests between the two of them played out by human champions.

Perhaps a story would help Leras embrace the ending.

Perhaps, at the least, it would distract him until the deed was done.

Ati wove discovery into his story, and hope. A prophecy—altered by Ati, it was true, but a prophecy nonetheless. Mankind had seen the symptoms of their dying world. The Deepness, they called it. Ati let them find their own salvation. He thought if anything, that would be an end to satisfy Leras.

It was not, and Leras usurped Ati’s hero with his own. Rashek. The story changed, but Ati had always been comfortable with chaos.

The new story was one of war, followed by peace. Rashek was a hard ruler, but he kept the land from outright war. A man after Preservation’s own heart, that one. A thousand years, and little worth mentioning changed.

Ati thought Leras would appreciate that.

He let Leras choose the hero the next time, a young slip of a girl. A worthy champion, especially once Ati had left his mark on her. Let her fight, let her rail against him. Ati was willing to be the villain in this story.

Leras died before the world. A mercy, and a necessity. Mercy, for Ati remembered betrayal. He would not make Leras suffer the same in watching humanity die.

Necessity, for Leras himself bound the world to its half-life.

But he did die, quietly and without fanfare. Ati alone kept vigil through that night, and Ati alone covered over his grave with ashes. He would have built a monument, if he’d had that power. Certainly Leras deserved it.

All Ati had to give was an ending. A right ending, and kind.

An end thousands of years overdue.


End file.
